The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an
independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not
fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there. The
next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their
manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve
their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift
for itself. The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant
found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the
present Salem. So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more
seemed added to the list of failures.
But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in
Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things. He saw that
many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit
instruments, "a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of
the land." So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded
when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government.
The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a
similar lesson. We desire, said White, "to raise a bulwark against the
kingdom of Antichrist." Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which
has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn
"to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did
till it overtook them.
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